Heart to Hart

That handsome man is Robert Wagner.  Movie star, TV star, all-around mensch.   I’m thinking about him because I recently came upon this amongst my books.

As you can see, it’s his autobiography.  I hadn’t looked at it in years, and as I was idly leafing through it, I saw this inscription.

(In case you can’t make out his handwriting it says: “To Ellen and Fritz. With my love and happiness. Always, Robert Wagner 03/05/09 You wonderful dog lovers)

Mike and I bumped into him at the Little Nell in Aspen one day. We just happened to have Fritz, our German Shepherd, with us and one thing led to another and we all started talking.  It turned out that R.J. too had a beloved German Shepherd named Larry and that we shared the same terrific vet- Scott Dolginow.

That’s why he autographed the book to my dog.

(My German Shepherds, Onda and Fritz)

And here’s R.J. his wife Jill St. John and Larry.  (Named for Sir Laurence Olivier, btw.)

What a guy.  He was gracious and charming.  Couldn’t have been nicer.

If you lived in Aspen, major celebrity-sightings were a daily occupational hazard.  We had ’em all. And we knew their local reputations.  Everyone had heard the stories.

There was The Good.

Catherine Zeta-Jones and her husband Michael Douglas were very much fan favorites. Beautiful (she) and kind to all.

Then there was The Bad.

Don Johnson had an awful reputation within the Ski School.  Stuck up, demanding, and petty. The local scuttlebutt had it that he had once asked a ski instructor to carry his boots.  Seems he was much closer to this character in real life than to good ol’ boy Sonny Crockett.

And there was The Ugly

.

That’s the late Michael Kennedy and his mother, Ethel.  Virtually all the Kennedys were despised as entitled, check-stiffing boors, but Michael was the worst of a rotten bunch.

His needless death in 1998- playing ski football on Ajax at four o’clock thereby endangering innocent skiers- was the sad end result of a lifetime of oafish behavior.

But for the most part, the Celebs and the Locals had a “live and let live” relationship that served all parties well.

Sure you recognized Cher and Goldie and Chevy** and Kurt, but you didn’t act like a touron (tourist + moron) and ask for their autograph or gape or anything uncool like that.

(**Well, Bill did get into a tussle with Chevy over the last turkey sandwich at High Alpine one lunchtime.  Bill won.  Chevy didn’t take it all that well.)

And we all had our favorites.

I, of course, was bowled over by my locker mate, Ringo.  For an entire ski season, he and I would put our ski boots on next to each other on the same bench.  I wish that I could report that we became great mates, luv, but I never wanted to bother him.  We’d just exchanged “hello’s” every morning.

Still I had to pinch myself because I could never believe that it wasn’t all A Hard Day’s Night dream.

And I wasn’t the only member of the Ross Clan with a favorite star encounter.

Nick really enjoyed the time- and the memories- of riding up the chair lift with this.

Even serious Natasha once came back from a day on the slopes all aglow. Seems like she shared some pizza at Up 4 Pizza at the top of Snowmass’s Big Burn with this guy.

Over the years I have spotted Dustin Hoffman, Will Smith, Don Henley, Jack Nicholson and Kevin Costner.

And one New Year’s Eve, I caught a glimpse of Ivana Trump with a group of hard-looking divorcées out on the town.  (Bet she never dreamed what her ex would be getting up to in 2016.)

Once I even got stranded at DIA waiting for the weather to clear for a Denver-to-Aspen flight one May.  There were exactly three people waiting for that flight- me, Billie Jean King (with a very cute Papillon) and Martina Navratilova.

We hung out and made small talk for about an hour.  Finally the captain announced that there was a break in the weather and that we were “going to go for it.”

We ran on board, the plane took off and soon we were back in Aspen.

Fast forward to a Christmas party that year.  I had been invited by SkiCo to a very posh bash they threw every year for their VIP’s.  (Don’t ask me why I was invited.  Maybe all the money I had spent vainly trying to learn how to pole plant correctly.)

A teenaged Nick was pressed into service as my escort and driver since I’m night blind. At first he was reluctant to have fun.  But he got into the spirit when I made him accompany me as I walked up to Martina.

“Watch this,” I said to my son.  “I know she’ll remember me.”

“Hi, Martina.  Remember when we all got stranded at DIA this Spring?  Well, I was going to ask you if you wanted to rent a car with me and drive to Aspen but I wasn’t quite sure if you could afford it.”

Martina laughed.  She was digging it.  (She’s so rich that she knew I was teasing.)

“I do remember you,” she said in a Greta Garbo accent.  “And the next time we get stuck at the airport, you rent the car and I vill drive.”

Fine by me.  She’s got the great hand-eye coordination, after all.

(Btw, her rival on the court, Chris Evert, spent a lot of time in Aspen when she was married to local ski hero, Andy Mill.  I sat behind Chris and her kids once on a very small plane and I can report that the children behaved perfectly.  Chris must have been a good mother as well as a great tennis player.)

Nick got a big kick out of the exchange.

“Dude!  You were chillin’ with Martina!”  He was amused.

But then he looked impressed.

“Wow. Look over there.  It’s the Hart to Hart dude!”

I followed where he was looking and there he was- Robert Wagner.

Now married to local Jill St. John and laughing and looking like the epitome old world Hollywood.

He might have been Jonathan Hart to Nick but to me he was the kid who invented the Sousaphone in Stars and Stripes Forever.

And the man who married the beautiful screen legend Natalie Wood.

Twice.

Sometimes we meet screen idols we admire.  Sometimes they don’t live up to our expectations.

Not in Robert Wagner’s case.

Handsome is as handsome does.

And R.J. you can sneak into my bedroom with Champagne any night you want.

And bring Larry.

(But leave Jill home.)